To ensure robust and reliable wireless communication at all locations within a given service area or indoor environment (e.g., an office building, a campus area, a shopping mall, a school, etc.), it is important for network designers or communication service vendors to determine the wireless coverage quality throughout the area. For an area with an existing wireless network, various techniques can be used to characterize the wireless coverage in the area and identify points of weak wireless coverage, providing guidance as to where wireless access points or signal repeaters should be installed. For an area in which a new wireless network is to be established, wireless coverage characterization and planning can help network designers to determine how many wireless access points should be installed, where the access points should be installed, and how much power should be used to transmit the wireless channel signals in order to ensure that wireless access is reliable at all locations within the area.
Wireless coverage planning and characterization can be tedious and labor intensive tasks, often requiring a technician or engineer to collect manual channel measurements throughout the area, and also requiring prior knowledge of the building specifications (e.g., floor plans, wall locations, building materials, furniture layouts, etc.). Moreover, since some wireless coverage characterization techniques require extensive manual data entry, the integrity of the wireless network could be compromised as a result of inaccurate entry of data.
The above-described deficiencies of current wireless coverage characterization and planning techniques are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of current technology, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art, and corresponding benefits of some of the various non-limiting embodiments described herein, may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.